


Milkshakes and Toothpaste

by boyonthebluemoon



Category: Dance Gavin Dance (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Band Fic, Comedy, Fluff, Gen, Not Slash, One Shot, Slice of Life, Summer, and yes its a cafe au bc i have no self-respect, maybe a future series??? maybe not???? who knows, yes it's another fuckin summer fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29355930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyonthebluemoon/pseuds/boyonthebluemoon
Summary: It's the dead of the summer, and all Jon Mess really wanted was some inspiration and solitude. Instead, what he got was terrible art block and unwanted company.
Relationships: Jon Mess/Tilian Pearson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Milkshakes and Toothpaste

Somewhere in Sacramento, California, it was just another humid and uneventful June afternoon.

The coffee shop Jon Mess usually hung out in was packed with chattering people, most of whom were simply there to find shelter from the sun and beat the heat outside. Meanwhile, he sat at the right end corner of the fairly busy establishment, which was his usual, more secluded spot.

He was just languidly working on his latest sketch study, when he was suddenly interrupted by someone loudly clearing their throat. As he looked up, Jon caught sight of a relatively stocky man, wearing a criminally-loud floral shirt that was about a quarter of the way unbuttoned and tucked into some tight-fitting pants. He gave their face a critical glance and only saw himself reflected in the stranger’s dark sunglasses.

_Great. Just my luck._

The man gently motioned to the empty chair in front of Jon. “Hey, is this seat taken?”

He had a surprisingly soft voice; sort of rough around the edges, but lilting and quietly polite. Jon had to admit, he was kind of taken aback by it. He was mostly expecting a boisterous asshat with less than five brain cells to start screaming at him to go away and shove him out of his precious table, or something else along that line.

_Wouldn’t be the first time it happened to me, and probably wouldn’t be the last._

Shaking the grim thoughts away, Jon snapped out of his trance and saw the guy still gazing at him expectantly, hip cocked to one side and eyebrows raised in a rather comical fashion.

“Uhh…no, it’s not, sorry, go ahead.” He finally stammered back in reply, shifting aside his drink aside as he fumbled to clear out some of his things scattered on the table. The man gave him a grateful nod as he slid into the unoccupied chair.

“Hey, thanks, man.”

“No problem.”

“So.” The stranger casually started, cool blue eyes peering over his lowered sunglasses while he gave the desk a subtle look-over. “I don’t mean to pry or anything, but I take it you’re…some sort of artist, yeah?”

“I guess you could call me that.” Jon uninterestedly mumbled in reply, stifling back an upset groan. He was never one for small talk—least of all with a total fucking stranger. If anything, he absolutely hated it with a burning passion and usually went out of his way to avoid it as much as possible. He tried to think up of some stupid excuse to leave, but the place was far too packed to successfully worm his way out without having to make contact with several sweaty bodies, _god forbid_ , and he didn’t really want to lose his spot since he really had nowhere else to go.

So Jon decided, against his better judgment, to stick it out. Maybe his unwanted companion would take the hint and shut up soon enough.

He didn’t.

“That’s pretty cool.” He nodded, a wistful smile forming on his face. “Gotta admit, I've never been quite a super artsy guy myself. I guess there was this one time back in kindergarten, where I drew a pretty nice scene with summa my chewed-up crayons, birds and mountains and trees and all, and then I proudly showed it to my teacher...but she said I shoulda done better!” He gestured incredulously. “To a poor excited five year old, can you believe? Talk about stompin' on my tiny heart and kickin' the shattered pieces right into the fireplace, huh?”

"That's a shame." Jon murmured half-sympathetically as he erased a crooked pencil line.

“But yeah, couldn’t blame her much though." The man chuckled. "It _was_ really bad.” That actually made Jon smirk a bit, and he tried to hide his unexpected reaction by hastily taking a sip from his plain iced coffee.

“So from that day forth, I kinda threw in the towel on drawing. Or the chewed-up crayon, if you may. Never really tried my darndest to be all that great at it since. I can always appreciate beautiful art, though. Not to sound like I'm braggin' 'bout nothing, but yeah, it's like I always had a naturally good eye for that kinda thing. Like a buzzin' fly on a museum wall or sum'n.”

"That's nice, I guess..."

"Anyhow baby cow, sorry if I rambled too much there. I know that's a bad habit of mine, but I can't help it, sometimes, and I just find what you’re doing really interestin'.” The man apologetically threw his hands up. “But please, carry on with your work, I don’t wanna disturb your creative process or imagination's vibes or anything of the sorts.”

Jon simply gave a noncommittal shrug as he continued with his sketch, growing more and more frustrated by the minute at how horrible it looked to him. On the other side of their shared table, the man leaned back deeper on his chair to relax, refusing to cease until the chair started shrilly creaking in protest and Jon's clenched teeth fell just short of completely shattering altogether. Once he finished settling up, _thank fuck!_ , the man absently pulled out a stick of cigarette from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth, which prompted his irritated tablemate's attention once again.

“Hey," groused Jon, "I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke here."

“Nah, that’s fine.” The man mused as he let the unlit cigarette dangle loosely between his lips. “False alarm, sorry. Wasn’t really plannin' to. Just another awful force of habit, though I know I gotta curb it soon. It’s quite a nasty vice, y’know."

"Hm...so I've heard."

"It's just like yeah, I wanna save myself from the whole 'it's bad for your health!' lecture from literally everyone I meet, but someone’s gotta make a hobby somehow, you feel me?" he heaved a loud sigh as he slid the limp cigarette stick behind one ear instead. Bits of stray tobacco sprinkled some of Jon's precious belongings, and he had to fight back the overwhelming urge to blow it back in the man's smug face and _hell,_ maybe even flip the entire table over while he was at it.

_Stop talking about your bullshit feelings dude, 'cause seriously, fuck that!_

Bummer for him, he wasn't really the confrontational type. He was more the type to accept a wrong order from a restaurant and passive-aggressively bitch about it under his breath for the whole duration of his meal, and still leave a decent 20% tip for the waiter who made the error because he doesn't wanna cause a diva scene and stick a neon sign on his forehead that says 'JERKASS CENTRAL' in all caps. If Jon had anger management issues to work through and the occasional morally-ambiguous tendencies, that was _his_ problem, and his problem alone. Pardon being wax poetic, but he'll murder his enemies on canvas and verse and shove the rest of his pent-up issues far away in his disorganised closet with the rest of his artworks, instead of pointlessly ragging on and on and bothering people with it, thanks very much.

_Unlike this oblivious bitch bitching right here..._

"...but hey, maybe I should take up art or painting instead, like you do." Jon didn't realise that the man was actually still talking—and frankly, it didn't seem like the man had also noticed that he had long stopped paying attention, either. "Oodles of enjoyment, that. Just flip on some Bob Ross to soothe my blasted bones and have some stupid fun beatin' the devil out of some brushes. What d’you think?”

_God, this guy sure is chatty._ It kind of annoyed Jon. But what annoyed him even more was that he didn’t find the idle chatter as unpleasantly irritating as he usually would have. Must be the summer heat finally getting to him. _**Has** to be._

“I mean...I think you could make a hobby by just beating the devil out of some brushes all day, you know.” He quipped back, nearly shocking himself out of his seat in the process. _Woahhh, nelly. Since when did you become Mr. Johnny fuckin' Carson??? You're being a weirdo in front of some other rando weirdo—knock it the hell off!_

Thankfully (or perhaps not) for him, Jon's lame remark somehow made the stranger laugh warmly, showing glimpses of the considerable gap between his front teeth. “Good point.” He replied with a sheepish nod. “I guess that’s kinda a zany downtime to have, but...better than slowly killin' my own lungs with terrible nicotine addiction, huh?”

Jon simply shrugged again in response, and their conversation gradually slid down into a somewhat-comfortable silence. The man politely flagged down a waitress and ordered one of those inane fruity drinks with a long, convoluted name that were all the rage with young customers these days, while Jon put on his earphones and carried on with his work, completely giving up on his previous ruined artwork and flipping his sketchbook the next page over to start a new one.

Everything felt unnervingly surreal to him now; the heat haze warping everything outside into a muddled impressionistic painting, the classical piano’s next movement twinkling into crescendo as it traipsed playful melodies around his ears, the unnamed man beside him like a finely-chiseled Grecian statue and even stiller than one, looking impressively angular as he observed distant nowheres and occasionally broke the spell with a quick sip from his pink frappuccino.

Jon felt like he was watching things from behind a thick wall of glass. Before he knew it, his vision had blurred over and his head was dangerously bobbing towards the table. He was just drowsy, _so drowsy;_ and the last thing he heard before his eyes fluttered shut was Vivaldi's lively music fading away to dead silence, slowly coalescing into background chatter and the stranger's soft humming of a weirdly familiar-sounding song...

**_“Keep dancing, dancing  
I know you're searching for something, something  
Keep dancing, dancing  
To keep my bridges from burning, burning  
You'll forget me soon...”_ **

Jon immediately snapped his head back upright, realising that he had accidentally fallen asleep. He groaned as he raked a hand through his matted auburn hair, feeling that cruel post-nap headache start to vexingly swell beneath his temples. _Serves you right, dumbass._

“How long have I been out?” He dazedly mumbled to no one in particular.

To his great surprise, someone actually answered back. “About…” The stranger sharing their table quickly checked his fancy-looking gold watch, “Twenty and a half minutes, I reckon?”

“Oh, uh.” Jon stuttered back as he swiftly turned away, his cheeks beginning to burn a bright crimson, _maybe deep lake madder red, even, christ on a bike!_ He cleared his throat and subtly swiped a sweatered arm through the tiny pools of sweat and spittle on the table, before ripping off his earphones and pretending to busy himself with untangling it. “Sorry...I, um—I didn’t know you were still here...”

“Ahh, it’s fine. I don’t really have places to go at this moment anyhow, and I just couldn’t bring myself to leave you all alone here, while you were all knocked out and taking a sweet lil' cat nap." The man ran nicotine-stained fingers through his dirty blond hair and slowly slicked it back, as if trying to recall something. "I mean, I've been there, y'know. I remember once fallin' asleep in a park bench some downtown after an exhausting run and nearly gettin' my ankles dragged all the way to the calaboose, 'cause those fool police seriously thought I was some vagrant drifter or some other! Dunno why, really. Maybe it was because of the ugly, patchy, bird's nest-lookin' beard I was audaciously growing at the time. Don't know what the hell I was tryna do with that look, either. Baaad idea, that one."

"Sure...but you—you really didn't have to wait here, though, I would've been fine all the same..."

"Hey now, merciless summer afternoon like this, happens to the best of us. And the worst, like me.” The man teasingly winked. “Plus, you look really adorable when you sleep.”

Jon didn’t quite know how to respond. “Thank…you...?”

“It’s no trouble at all!” The man replied as he stood up and gracefully stretched his arms. “Well, I better be headin' out now. Got buses to chase and parties to ruin, and I don’t wanna be a creeper or anything.” He slightly tilted his head and smirked. “Not as much as I already have been, at least. Pardon that noise.”

"Right..."

“Oh, the name’s Tilian, by the way.” He said, holding out a hand to shake. “Tilian Pearson. You?”

“It’s Mess. Um, Jon Mess, I mean. Or just Jon. Jon.” Jon accepted the gesture a little too shakily for his liking, internally cringing at how stupidly flustered he was.

_Reeeaaal smooth there, idiot._

“Mess, huh?” Tilian gave one knowing look at his paint-splotched shirt and chuckled. “How appropriate. Just kiddin' around, of course! But really, thanks for letting me have a seat. That was real sweet'a you.”

“Again, no problem. Thanks for...uh, keeping me company, I suppose...?" _OKAY what_ _the unholy_ _fuckity FUCK Mess like yeah you're not some kinda crazy profound poet like you love making yourself out to be but why do you have to use **those** words out of all billion possible fucking words in the English goddamn dictionary and make it sound so much weirder than it is when it's literally nothing—_

“Hey, it's nothing! And you know...it was real nice meeting you, Jon.” Tilian said, the lightest hints of a fond smile playing on his lips. “Tell you what, next time I catch you here, I’ll ask you to draw me like one of your French girls.”

“Ugh.” Jon couldn’t help but to grimace at the disgusting proposition, and his visceral reaction only made his new acquaintance laugh heartily again.

“Hope to see you around.” Tilian waved Jon a last farewell before gracefully weaving his way through the thinning crowd and stepping out the glass doors with a wind chime tinkle, and the artist was finally all alone once more, left slightly open-mouthed and clutching at his HB pencil and thawed-out drink like a delirious idiot.

Jon blinked once. Gazed thoughtfully at the closed doors. Painstakingly drew his bleary eyes towards the messy portrait he secretly sketched of Tilian's profile on his sketchbook. And there he sat, as chattering crowds came and went in diluted waves, as the lazy summer sun sunk deeper down the chromatic horizon, as melting iced coffee trickled into his tobacco-dusted bag and blotched his precious belongings; staring at his artwork perplexedly until the pencil slipped from his loose grasp and clattered on the linoleum floor, breaking the unsharpened lead clean off.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote two chapters of this fanfic about a year and a half ago with the intent of passing it off to a very serious academic-related writing workshop (if that doesn't scream big crackhead energy idfk what does), but that thing thankfully pretty much fell through, and my lazy self never got around to editing and posting this until now. I'm not sure if I'll continue this series though, so I guess we'll see???


End file.
